The Dark Theatre
by Harpersilvertears
Summary: Many years from now, after a great War has torn the world apart, a group of people come to the Red Theatre in dead New Orleans. It was built in the image of a long-destroyed Opera Populaire in Paris, where many things have happened, and will happen again.
1. Prologue

This is my first story, so gimme a break. Hope is basically Christine, it explains in later chapters how she truly is Christine. Erik is well.. Erik. Paul is Raoul, and it will all fall into place eventually. Flames? Light me!

The dark, menacing theatre stood in front of them in it's crumbling grandeur, threatening yet beautiful all the same. As the small group stood on the leafy, overgrown walk, one of the old marble pillars leaned in the forceful wind, and tumbled over with a crack and a thump.

'No turning back now, I suppose.' Rang out a clear voice, her fear hidden in the howling of the wind.

'You were the one who started this whole bit…' came the reply.

A quiet giggle answered him, and the woman who spoke first gave him a push, then stepped past to the decrepit steps of the old theatre. She spun around slowly, taking it all in, drinking up the fallen pillars, the stiff old magnolia trees grown right up to the path, the ivy everywhere, the wildness of it all, drinking it up with her eyes. She spread her arms out wide, closed her eyes and let the wind wrap around her, slips its invisible fingers through her dark, curly hair. A feeling of belonging pervaded her senses for a moment- a quick sense of welcoming- but was gone before she opened her eyes.

She felt her friends' eyes on her, watching her movements with bewilderment.

'Are you done, Hope?' Came the icy words of another woman in the group. Her frigid blue eyes narrowed momentarily, her red hair blowing around her face wildly.

'Quite done, Elizabeth. Come on, Josef, Paul, Remy… Let us enter the enchanting realm of music, where power and beauty hold sovereign sway.' She gestured for them all to follow her with a small, delicate hand. The troupe of 8 moved lethargically- none of the others felt this connection to an old, tumble-down theatre that hadn't even been used for years.

Thunder burst overhead, and suddenly nothing held them back- they rushed for the safety of the old theatre. Only Hope remained outside, staring up at the clouded sky, a smile on her face.

'Home…' She whispered, and then stepped inside the great double doors.


	2. Into the Darkness

'Wow… is this place ever trashed.' Paul said.

Everyone nodded in silent assent. Needles and old bottles littered the floor, relics from the city that was gone now. No longer were there homeless living in this dark theatre- there wasn't a living soul for miles in any direction, for all that there were buildings stretching out beyond the horizon. The city was old, dead…. empty. New Orleans was long gone, had been for nearly 5 years. The last Great War had seen to that.

'The blueprints say this thing was built like a bomb shelter, walls three feet thick on the outside. Like some old world thing, built a couple of hundred years ago.' Jack said. He looked up from the worn documents to the high ceilings, barely visible in the fading light of the day. The storm had all but taken away the last few hours of light that they were promised.

CRACK!

Lightning struck some tall part of the structure, and all the working lights in the room momentarily flashed on, blinding the group. Bats flipped their wings open and fled, terrified by the sound.

'Who knew bats could survive where humans can't?' Josef sighed, and then dropped his bags. 'Oh, great leader, tell us what to do. We have food and batteries and lights enough for a small army, maps of this gargantuan place, from Apollo's Lyre to the deepest catacomb. Where do we go first?'

Hope sighed. 'Oh, I suppose we could find the outermost dressing rooms, clean those up for now and set ourselves up for living in those. Tomorrow we can handle the big stuff, like having power restored to this place.'

Remy raised an eyebrow. 'You really think your mother is going to restore power to this giant old building? I thought that plant she found was half-destroyed from the war!'

'Half destroyed is still half usable.' Marguerite, speaking for the first time in several hours, piped out. She moved to stand by her closest friend, Hope, and smiled.

'Shell is a kind woman. She'll indulge her daughter in the one thing she can now, I think.'

Hope smiled at the thought of her mother. 'And besides, she thinks of it as an experiment. If the power works, and we can get this old place working, we can help loads of people! Turn this old stage, this place built like a bomb shelter, into a place full of life.'

Josef laughed bitterly. 'Once, this place was full of life. Full of great musicians, divas of the stage and virtuosos on the played note.'

'This place has been closed down for fifty years or more, long before the war, Josef. No musicians have been here for as long as any of us have been alive.' Alex's sad voice made it evident about how he felt on this matter- he and his sister, Elizabeth, were raised to understand and enjoy such things as the stage. Ah, to live that life again.

'No matter. Let us continue on to… where were we going, Hope?' Elizabeth moved to stand beside Hope, who had the second copy of the blueprints.

'The first wing of dressing rooms. Closest to the outside, easy access, fairly roomy. We can clean those up and settle for the night, I suppose.' She pointed at the place on her 'print, and then lead the way.


	3. Interlude Paul

The further the group traveled into the tired old building, the less wear and tear they saw. Apart from layers of dust, some areas of the theatre were still pristine. The stage, for instance, had all of its original hardwood, and the huge velvet curtains remained untouched by moths or other bugs. Of course, they took their exploration slowly, for they had only a limited amount of power until they could look at the electricity and wiring of the building.

It was a task that Paul was made for.

He was a former military man, building new things at the will of his commander. He created a new way to use less power, and was going to become rich because of it… and then the war started. No longer were his skills needed to wire planes and buildings- they wanted him on the front line, dropping bombs on whatever target they asked. Russia, he had seen go up in flames. China, Argentina, the Franco-Spanish states. The Catholic nation, Italia or whatever it was called. The world's population shrunk to less than a million people, and all because of the missions he flew. Hell, he hadn't even known how to fly a plane before the last Great War, but they made sure he learned. It wasn't that hard, considering the mortality rate. He flew so many missions, lost so many friends…

And then it was over. Paul Fontenay returned to his home of New Orleans to find that less than a hundred people remained. Alex and Elizabeth, the grown children of the Mayor and formidable, indeed. Hope, Josef, and Marguerite, students in the musical college, touring the country together when the bombs hit. Jack, a street rat living in the basement of an old building, surviving but not knowing how he did it. Remy, the colored servant in the Mayor's household, taken with them into their shelter and hating them for it. And so many more besides…. So many lives lost.

And he had been a part of it.


	4. Red, Red Rose

Elizabeth had immediately taken up the dressing suite that belonged to the star of the show. There was no surprise in this, as she was demanding of everyone and wanted only the best. Alex took the room next to it at his sister's insistence, but everyone else spread out.

Hope took a room towards the very end of the hall, a smallish room with a giant mirror in an elaborate frame. She was somehow drawn to it, this ancient relic of the past. It had not cracked, and had only the thinnest coat of grime. There were dried rose petals all over the room, lending it a fresh, sweet smell… it relaxed her. And so she sat in her small amounts of free time, staring into the mirror in an attempt to divine it's secrets, day after day.

It was after a day of assisting the quiet and morose Paul with the wiring of the main part of the theatre that she finally saw something, something that did not belong in the reflection of her dark and delicate face. A flash of white! Or perhaps a face… a masked face. Yes, that seemed right… a man's face, half covered in a white mask. Hope smiled sleepily. She leaned against the wall, still peering into that glassy expanse, not noticing her reflection had since disappeared, and fell into a deep sleep.

_An organ, playing a morose song. Commanding, yet sad all the same. He wore ancient clothing, a cloak, a suit, a lovely vest. All in black. His mask was white, his face apart from that was handsome, but grief-stricken. She tried to comfort him, to tell him there was nothing to be afraid of, but he did not hear her. _

_A boat, a dark lake deep underground. His song surrounding her, entreating her to stay, to keep from the light, to never leave him. _

"_Christine…"_

A pounding on her door shocked her awake. She jumped up, shook the stiffness from her neck, and answered it. Paul said there was a problem with one of the light boards, and so they had to get an early start today. She nodded, pulled back her hair into a knot, and then left with him.

In front of the mirror, where she had been laying, lay a single red rose, a black ribbon tied around its stem.


	5. Blueprints

Paul led Hope to the stage, past the light box, and down into a now familiar hallway where the fuse box was. He flipped it open, hit the appropriate switches, and then pointed.

'I've discovered where most of these lead to. The stage, the dancer's wing, warm up rooms, costume storage, storage of all sorts… but this set right here…'

'Do the blueprints have any notation for it? Any indication of where they might lead?' She pulled out the worn pages, flipped through them quickly.

'… I think we're missing the lowest levels.' Paul grimaced, looking over her shoulder.

'What? How can we be? I thought there were only 7 underground floors!'

'I think there may be as many as 10, possibly more.'

'How could we have lost three pages? And the front view 'print doesn't even show the belowground levels…' With a muttered curse, she sat on the floor and set her head in her hands. This could set them back weeks, months even! Most of the electrical work was done, but it had to be _perfect._ This place… it had been in her dreams for years! She needed to see it as it once was.

'Hope, it's not a major setback. With the way we've found this place, we can probably just ignore the bottom half. It's not like we've got people living underneath us.'

Hope looked up wearily.

'This theatre… it was built exactly from the blueprints of …oh, some Opera house in Paris. The Opera Populaire. I read about it in a book once, when I was small. Some crazy lady with tons of money was upset because the old one was being torn down. So, she took the blueprints, some things from the original stage, props and such, and built this.' She sighed.

'Kristine Beaumont was her name, I believe.' Paul intoned, looking thoughtful.

The air seemed to take a breath around them.

A flash of her dream visited her… that sad, broken voice! _Christine…_ Hope shook it away. None of that, she couldn't stand it.

Paul offered her his hand, and gratefully, she took it. He pulled her up, and suddenly, they were eye to eye, suddenly very close. Hope's stomach clenched, and she turned away, dusting herself off.

'Well, master electrician, what's your recommendation? Can we continue on with the restoration without messing with the lower floors?' She said, cursing her suddenly trembling voice.

'I believe so. You can have your mother fully restore the power tomorrow. But… Hope…I wanted to…'

But Hope was gone, the door slowly closing after her.

'Damn.'


	6. Champagne and Electricity

_**So, here is the next chapter. I apologize for shortness, but I always enjoy reviews and comments. Please, let me love you!**_

Elizabeth looked up from her careful scrubbing of the floor. Hope rushed past her, a curious look on her face, but that was not what caught her attention. The sudden swirls in the dust around her, as if someone were moving, someone in a long cape or dress. There was a flash of white in the corner, and then all was still.

'Odd. It's almost as if this place was haunted…' She said quietly to herself, and then went back to her work.

The event slipped her mind completely, and she would have forgotten about it altogether had Josef not said anything later that night.

They had all finished their varying tasks for the night and had settled into the lounge where the smells from the small propane stove were overpowering, and small talk had begun. Hope had made the radio call to her mother, and the power would be on soon, and Alex was busy regaling Remy and Jack with tales of his family, which was famous for its extravagant characters and famous actors and singers.

'I kid you not, my many times great aunt Carlotta, an Italian diva living in France hundreds of years ago, lost her position because she _croaked_ on stage! Like a frog! In the middle of a song! Just… Lalala CROAK!' He hooted with laughter and slapped his knee, while the other two pretended to be interested.

Paul attended the food, with Marguerite's help, and Josef lounged on a tired old couch. Elizabeth motioned for him to make room, and curled up next to him.

'How goes it in the storage rooms, Josef?' She asked politely.

'Not well. I swear, this place must be haunted. I felt like someone was watching me the entire time I was fooling about with costumes and such. And then the flash of… something like a white face… when I found the storage room where they kept the music.'

The earlier event pushed to the front of Elizabeth's mind then, but she merely smiled and said nothing.

A white face and suddenly moving air could mean anything. Anything! And so she kept her peace.

Quietly, Hope set the radio down, and slid over to the lamp that lit the room. She turned it down, ignoring the complaints of her companions, until it was totally black in the lounge.

A warm hiss ran through the room, and then, BAM! Electricity! The lights in the room, and indeed most rooms in the theatre, turned on. Hope grinned, grabbed a bottle of champagne that she had kept hidden in her bag, and popped it open.

'To our first milestone. Electricity!' Everyone cheered, and tin mugs were filled with the now rare bubbly treat. It was passed around with their pitiful dinner, freeze dried beef and something that looked like vegetables.

'I think a garden would be a good idea,' remarked Marguerite as she eyed the would-be carrots on her plate. With a sigh, she stuffed them in her mouth and downed them with bubbly.


End file.
